Editors' Review

Whatever the appeal of games with expensive special effects and complicated story lines, old-fashioned classics like backgammon remain powerful forces in the digital gaming world.

This download is a near-perfect implementation of that classic game, offering various levels of solo play as well as options to challenge live opponents on the same computer or over the Net. A detailed tutorial provides help for beginning players, and wide-ranging features include a clock, an option to turn on advanced rules, animation speed options, and three separate difficulty levels.

On the aesthetic front, the game includes elegant skins for the pieces and board, animations for the movements of the pieces, pleasant sounds, and an intuitive interface. All told, we think it would be hard to do better than this version of Backgammon, and dedicated players may want to purchase this even over cheaper or free options.

Publisher's Description

+

From Microsys Com.:
Backgammon Classic has a new design, more strength, many playing options and an intuitive interface. Three different levels, from beginner to advanced, can extend your fun and improve your skills. Selectable skin, game or match play, statistical information, save/load a game, doubling cube, several playing levels and player ratings are a few of our backgammon features. Version 7. 2 adds two boards.

We have played over 100 games, each of 64 points, so we feel we have a good understanding of the software. Others play 2-3 games and go write a review, we ... played much more.

Cons

Developers have missed the point. When player against computer are playing, computer rolls anything they damn please to. Total and complete disrespect for equal chances. They can have various levels of difficulty(actually, the free classic does not), but they do NOT have the right to roll whatever they want. The abuse it too, they roll sixes twice in a row, then fives, then threes, all in consecutive order. Its so obvious the dice is fixed. Players do not have equal chances, not even close.

Summary

Total development misery and disrespect, game will get you upset each and every time.

horrible to use, fixes the dice and frustrates everyone. Players should have equal chances, you cannot set levels and roll what you prefer, its not your job to decide that, your job it to play the game fairly with equal chances for all. Whats the purpose of playing a game you know it will get you in a bad mood?

Cheats, cheats, cheats. I still win 70% or more of the 5 point matches but there is no way the dice are generated by a true random number generator. Don't know at what point it goes in to cheat mode but it is very frustrating and very obvious when you play as much as I do. GNU is no better.

Summary

Not bad for $20 considering what else is available. It gets worse when playing real players as most are bad sports or idiots. Now can one ever know if the game uses a true rng for the dice.

Updated on Oct 1, 2013

How does on know if the RNG is for real. I've yet to see a backgammon game will play with strategy alone using pure RNG dice.

Updated on Oct 1, 2013

How does on know if the RNG is for real. I've yet to see a backgammon game will play with strategy alone using pure RNG dice.

I cannot comment as I only used it once. It was straightforward and seemed easy but limited.

Cons

I thought it was free. It is a trial and then becomes inactive if you don't buy it. The rolling of the dice wasn't to my liking and you don't get as much choice as I'd like. For example if you roll a 3 and a 4 when you click a tile the computer decides which choice to make and you can then back out of it and try again. I prefer to click the tile and the square I want it to move to and I'm not a fan of backing out of my choices once they are made.

Summary

I installed it. Ran it. Played one game and found out I only had 10 uses before it expired so I uninstalled it. No point in getting into a game I won't be playing.

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